The Witch & the Cathedral

by C. Dale Brittain

  “So that’s all we can do, be upset together?”

  “And learn to live with it. People can learn to live with a surprising number of problems. Yurt has gone on without your father, though when he died I never thought it would.”

  Six winters ago, I reminded myself, was far more recent to me than it was to Paul. He did not find my comment reassuring. “Mother’s certainly recovered nicely from her loss,” he grumbled. “You would have thought at her age she’d be much too old for love.”

  Since I knew no good way to contradict this foolish idea without also pointing out that I thought eighteen was much too young to know anything about love, I said nothing.

  “And this Vincent is younger than she is by at least five years; she won’t tell me exactly. I think he’s deceiving her terribly. She goes around telling people she feels like a girl again, while it’s clear that his only interest in an old woman is to get hold of her kingdom.”

  I had to smile at this, but since Paul had rolled over onto his stomach he fortunately didn’t see me. I would have been in love with the queen even if I had been eighteen and she was forty-three. “Do you know when they’re planning the wedding?” I asked with remarkable calmness.

  “Not yet—I guess there’s still hope she’ll discover her mistake before it’s too late. She told me she didn’t even want to start plans for the wedding until after I come of age, and the dean of the cathedral sent her a note that if she wanted to get married there she would have to reserve the church six months ahead of time. And she said she didn’t want to get married during the winter.”

  So they might not be getting married for close to a year. I agreed silently with Paul; the longer the wedding was put off, the more likely that she would have the sense not to go through with it.

  He changed the subject abruptly, turning toward me with arms wrapped around one knee. “So what have you been doing the last few months in the wizards’ school?”

  “I ended up teaching improvisational magic to technical wizardry students. In spite of all the formulas and books we have, you still have to be able to create your own spells—and to know when to try something unusual. Of course,” I added with a chuckle, “sometimes the unusual is not a good idea.” I went on to tell him about the three drunk newts.

  Paul laughed, pulling up and twisting together blades of grass. “I think I’ll go study at the wizards’ school,” he said thoughtfully.

  This made me sit up sharply. “Do you mean that?”

  He looked at me with surprise. “Is there a reason why I shouldn’t?”

  “No, but— Usually members of the aristocracy don’t become wizards. The training is too long and too hard and the rewards too negligible in comparison to aristocratic rule.”

  “But aristocrats become priests sometimes.”

  “Well, yes, but I’ve never heard of a king doing so. And there are a lot more priests than there are wizards. I assume a lot of men have a religious calling or something.”

  “So would I be the only king at the wizards’ school?”

  “That’s right,” I said, hoping desperately he was just casting around in his mind for an alternative to living with Vincent.

  “What is it, an eight-year program?” he asked, positioning a blade of grass between his thumbs. He blew on it and seemed pleased to produce a high, blatting tone. “Maybe you could just teach me a little magic here.”

  “I could certainly teach you a few simple spells,” I said, trying to hide my relief. I liked Paul tremendously, but I could not imagine him in the wizards’ school—nor imagine Yurt abandoned by its new king. “Real wizardry training,” I went on, “has almost all taken place at the school for the last century and a half. There are thousands of aristocratic courts in the western kingdoms and probably hundreds of seminaries, but only one wizards’ school. Since the old apprentice system died out, everyone’s been trained the same, and most of us know each other. But there are still a number of people, not wizards, who know the odd spell or two. Your father tried to learn to fly once though he never got very far. And your Great-aunt Maria wanted me to teach her wizardry; her problem was that she got bored with the first-grammar of the Hidden Language.”

  “I never knew she was interested in magic,” said Paul in surprise. “The last couple of months, while you’ve been gone, she claims to have gotten very interested in theology.”

  It was my turn to be surprised. The Lady Maria had a lively mind and had made early chapel service every morning for years, but she had always become quickly bored by anything intellectual. “Your father was interested enough in religion to go on pilgrimage,” I said.

  “But Father was different. Besides, that was when the old chaplain was still here,” meaning Joachim. “He wasn’t too bad, and I also liked that priest whom the old chaplain had take over for him. But last winter, when he got a chance to go be a chaplain in the City, we ended up stuck with the chaplain we’ve got now.

  “If you ask me,” he added in tones of disgust, “it isn’t religion she’s interested in at all, but that young chaplain. She acts moonstruck when he’s around. I decided I had to speak to her firmly. ‘Aunt Maria,’ I said, ‘I hope you remember that priests have to swear a vow of chastity.’ And you know what she said? She told me I had an ‘impure mind.’ All I can say, there are too many people in this castle who ought to know enough to act their age.”

  Since I didn’t like the young chaplain either, I didn’t say anything. The problem with being mature was that I was always feeling that I ought to tell young people things for their own good when they were things I wouldn’t have wanted to hear myself.

  “I’ll tell you who has an ‘impure mind’: it’s that chaplain.”

  “Have there been any particular incidents of impurity?” I asked in some alarm.

  “Of course not. Everybody but me thinks he’s fine.” I relaxed again. “But I can tell from his laugh and his handshake that he’s really a goat.”

  Since these had never conveyed anything of the sort to me, I attributed this statement to Paul’s dislike of any change of personnel in Yurt. But an uneasy thought sent cold fingers walking down my spine. I had assumed that Zahlfast, in warning me against priests who would destroy me, was warning me against the cathedral. He might instead have been warning me against the young chaplain of Yurt.

  Paul jumped to his feet, looking as satisfied and resolute as though we had decided something, which as far as I could tell we had not. “Race you back to the castle,” he said, reaching for his horse’s reins.

  II

  At dinner that night the queen formally welcomed me home to Yurt. We ate as we always did in the great hall of the castle. A brass choir, seated on a little balcony, played as the serving platters were brought in. Suspended beneath the high ceiling were the magic globes made many years ago by my predecessor as Royal Wizard, casting a sparkling light on the crystal and silver. The tall windows stood wide open, but a blazing fire on the hearth took the chill out of the spring air.

  As regent, the queen sat at the head of the main table where the king had once sat, and Paul sat at the opposite end. I wondered where Vincent would expect to be seated once he married the queen.

  I dined as I always had with the Lady Maria on my right hand and the chaplain facing me across the table. Paul’s Great-aunt Maria now had hair as white as mine, but her manner had scarcely changed since she had worn her golden curls in girlish locks bedecked with bows.

  “It was not the same here while you were gone,” she said, fixing me with wide blue eyes. “All that arcane wisdom you wizards acquire makes you uniquely capable of counseling a court on all sorts of worldly matters, not just those involving magic.” She paused for a bite. “But there are other matters,” she added, “where even a wizard’s wisdom does not reach: these are the affairs of the soul. And it is the inner soul, the inner heart, that drives women and men. I may seem to be an old woman leading a quiet life in a small kingdom, but within this heart are scores of adventures
, of triumphs, of tragedies, of fears and hopes each day.”

  I had forgotten in my months away how irritating the Lady Maria could sometimes be. This sounded like the result of what Paul had characterized as theological discussions with the young chaplain.

  He smiled and bobbed his head at her. To me he seemed much too young to have the responsibility for the souls of the royal court—he was even younger than I had been when I first came to Yurt. He had a very wide, congenial smile, but somehow I had never felt it was sincere. If Joachim did become bishop, I thought, I would ask him for a different chaplain.

  “We know what you wizards do down at that school,” continued the Lady Maria, jabbing me playfully with her elbow. “You plan to coordinate all your efforts, both against the western kings and against the Church!”

  “We certainly try to coordinate our wizardly efforts for best effect,” I said, startled to find that I was considered one of the wizards down at the school. “It’s always hard, though. I’m sure you know that wizards are generally in competition with each other—and not always friendly competition. And if wizardry and the Church are rivals,” I added graciously but insincerely, “I think the Church may be winning.”

  “But it really true,” the Lady Maria asked, “that your school now intends to put a wizard not just in every royal or ducal court, but in every castle and manor house?”

  The young chaplain widened his eyes at me as though trying to signal that he was not responsible for her. I found this highly unlikely.

  “I wouldn’t call it an intention,” I said uneasily. What had the young chaplain been telling them while I was gone? It was a good thing that Joachim’s call had taken me away from the school sooner than I had planned, or there might have been a full-fledged plot against institutionalized magic here by the time I finished making improvisation into an organized discipline. “It’s certainly true that more noble households have hired wizards during the last generation or so, but that’s only because the school has made more fully-qualified wizards available.”

  I added to myself that it was a good thing I had graduated when I did. Without an honors certificate or even areas of distinction, I might not be able today to become Royal Wizard at even as small a kingdom as Yurt, and I could instead be casting spells in a ramshackle manor house in the foothills of the mountains.

  We were interrupted at this point by the arrival of dessert, raspberry pudding, my favorite. I looked over to the side table where the servants were sitting and signaled my approval to the cook. She smiled back, highly pleased. The cook was now a full-bosomed matron and had a daughter almost as old as she had been when I first met her, but we had been friends ever since she was a saucy kitchen maid.

  If it had not been for the Lady Maria and her questions, I would have assumed that the whole court was as happy to see me again as I was to be here. Now I was beginning to wonder.

  “Wizard!” called the queen down the table. “We missed your illusions while you were gone. Could you entertain us over dessert as you used to?”

  My entertainments went over very well. I made the same scarlet dragon I had tried on the Romney children, and this time it got the appreciation it deserved. I finished by creating a pair of golden crowns, glittering with enough jewels to be worth a small kingdom by themselves if they were real, and had them whirl through the air and settle on the queen’s and Paul’s heads.

  “Thank you!” said Paul with a laugh. “Everybody else keeps trying to remind me that I still have three months to go!”

  As the illusions faded away, people began to disperse. The young chaplain startled me by touching my elbow. “Would you care for a final glass of wine in my chambers?”

  For a moment I was unable to answer. Even aside from my suspicions of him, coming back to Yurt had revived long-forgotten memories of the day I first arrived here. We had eaten in the same hall, its doors and windows open to the air; I had had the Lady Maria beside me; and after dinner I had asked Joachim to have a glass of wine in my chambers.

  The young chaplain seemed to take my silence as a symptom of abstemiousness. “The Apostle tells us to take ‘a little wine for thy stomach’s sake,’” he said with a genial chuckle, patting the organ in question, “and we shouldn’t disobey the Apostle, now, should we?”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I was thinking of something else. I’d be very happy to join you.”

  I turned toward the stairs that led up to the small room both Joachim and his immediate successor had had, but the young chaplain turned the other way. I hurried after him, recalling some problem which had made him ask for different chambers.

  “So how are you settling into your new duties?” I asked as I caught up. “You’d been here a month with the previous chaplain, but you’d only been on your own for a few weeks when I left.” I wondered jealously if he now thought of Yurt as his kingdom.

  “Very well, I hope. But maybe you shouldn’t be asking me,” he added with another chuckle, “but those I try to serve!”

  He opened his door and motioned me to precede him. I observed at once that he had more space than I did. But I was also relieved to see that his chambers did not suggest an impure mind. The rooms were furnished sparsely, with nothing on the walls but his seminary diploma and the crucifix at the head of the narrow bed.

  “You probably wondered why I asked you to join me,” the chaplain said, opening a bottle, “especially after the Lady Maria seemed to imply that you and I ought to be fierce competitors!” He gave a broad smile and handed me a glass. Even though it had always bothered me that Joachim had a rather limited sense of humor, I would at the moment have preferred his sober intensity.

  “So she’s been taking her instruction in directions you hadn’t intended?” I asked, taking a sip. The first night I had met Joachim, we had put away several bottles of City vintage between us. I had been determined to show him that no priest could outdrink a wizard, and although I had never asked him about it, I had the impression he didn’t want to let a wizard think he could outdrink a priest.

  “Well, her comments have put me in a delicate position,” said the chaplain with well-modulated cheerfulness. “You may not believe me”—I didn’t—”but it was not I who originally pointed out to her the growing role that wizards are taking in all noble courts. While naturally I have stressed the position of the Church in my little chats with her, it was someone else who planted the first seed of the idea that wizards are manipulating the secular rulers of society.”

  “Then who was it?”

  “Christian charity forbids me from speaking his name.”

  Prince Vincent, I thought with sudden conviction. He must be behind the rumors the Master of the school had heard.

  “But I will try to make amends,” continued the chaplain, “by asking you to join us in a conspiracy!”

  I barely avoided choking on my wine. “What sort of conspiracy?”

  “We want to make sure the queen does not make the error of marrying Prince Vincent.”

  Immediately I liked the young chaplain much better. I could sort out all these strange rumors later. “And who is we?” I asked with an accommodating smile.

  He looked down for a moment as though embarrassed, then smiled again. “Well, I sounded pretty self-important there for a moment, didn’t I! So far, the conspiracy is mostly myself. The Lady Maria is of course in agreement with my purposes.”

  “I would have thought she’d adore the romance of a love match.”

  “In a way she does, but there is a core of wisdom in what you might think is just a silly head.”

  I did not point out that I had probably known the Lady Maria since he was a child begging his mother for extra snacks. “How about other members of the court?”

  “No,” he said, shaking his head regretfully. “When I tried to broach the topic to one of the knights, he said something—I know you’ll find this hard to credit—about the Church needing to stay out of the affairs of the aristocracy!” So if members of the court w
ere being taught to distrust wizards, I noted with interest, they also distrusted the chaplain. “I would like to bring Prince Paul into our plans,” he added, “though at his age it is hard to trust his judgment.”

  I thought uncharitably that the chaplain was not very much older. “I can understand why Paul doesn’t like the thought of his mother’s remarriage,” I said. “He’s had her all to himself, and he doesn’t want any disservice to his late father’s memory. But I don’t understand your own objections.”

  He leaned forward and spoke gravely. The candlelight made flickering points of light in his eyes. “A woman, once widowed, does better to devote herself to God than to another temporal spouse.”

  “So you think widows should never remarry?”

  “The Apostle tells us it is best that they do not. I can see that she felt she had a moral obligation to raise her son to manhood before retiring, but a woman of true religious sensibilities would now to planning her retreat to a nunnery. The Nunnery of Yurt has an excellent reputation for holiness and was in the past, I understand, supported by generous and pious gifts from the royal family of Yurt.”

  I was unable to answer at once. The queen had in fact, when very young, contemplated entering a nunnery rather than marry someone she detested, but she had instead married the king, whom she loved. I could not see her in a nunnery, then or now.

  “Have you mentioned this to the queen?”

  “I tried to suggest to her delicately that perhaps remarriage would distract her from the higher affairs of the soul, but she just laughed.”

  I gave him my wizardly look. “Surely I do not need to tell you that to force a soul into suitable religious behavior will not help that soul’s salvation.” I rose to my feet without waiting for an answer. “Thank you for the wine. It is good if representatives of wizardry and the Church can agree on issues of mutual importance.”